Hey everyone, this week, we have my beautiful wife Tammy here as a guest writer. I think many people would enjoy learning about the journey she's been on in regards to our home. Enjoy!

-Jordan

I have been on a decluttering kick lately and I have to tell you, my house feels so much better! And I feel so much better! I want to share what got the ball rolling for me. The first step was reorganizing the stuff. The second step was getting rid of stuff. This post will deal with the first. If there is interest, I can do another post about the second.

I am writing as a working mom of two young boys, aged four and six. My husband works full-time. We live in a 2000 sq ft home that has a finished basement, a main floor, and an upstairs. My husband values quality and has no problem spending the money if it’s something that will get used; I am a sucker for thrift-store bargains. I tell my husband, I am part Scottish and part East Indian - it’s not my fault!

I would say that the most obvious source of clutter in our home was toys. Our boys are into cars, trucks, trains, and Batman. They used to also be enamoured with Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, and the Super Wings. Did I mention I love thrift stores? Oh, and FaceBook Marketplace! Do you know how many great toys you can get for a fraction of what they’d cost new?? We had toys in every room of our house! At one point, each boy had an IKEA shelving unit full of toy bins in their bedroom. There were big cars and trucks parked between the couch and the wall on the main floor and against the wall in the basement were several more bins of random toys. Not all the bins had toys, though. Some had books; some had art supplies. Though I tried hard to keep everything organized, it was just too much! The house never felt tidy no matter how much I cleaned.

One day I was listening to a webinar while I folded laundry. It was Avital, from The Parenting Junkie, talking about mindful parenting. The topic was how to create zones within your home. Seriously, if you have young children you need to learn about this! I was so inspired while listening that I actually stopped folding laundry and rearranged my entire house then and there. And I haven’t looked back! And the best part was, I just moved around furniture I already had. It was literally just rearranging things. You can find out more by visiting www.theparentingjunkie.com and searching “zones”. My main take away was that our spaces speak to us.

Say what? Consider a library. You walk through the doors and into a room of book-lined shelves. Usually there are comfortable chairs placed at various spots around the room or near the windows. The chairs seem to beckon you over, saying, “Come, sit. Immerse yourself in a story.” Or imagine a fitness centre with rows of treadmills and various other exercise equipment. You immediately know what the space is for. Even if there was no sign on the door, as soon as you walk in, you know what you are meant to do in that space. Now, think about your home. When you enter a room is it obvious what the space is for? The idea of zones is to create specific areas for specific activities.

The five suggested zones are: The messy zone, the quiet zone, the play zone, the focus zone, and the movement zone. The concept made so much sense and was so easy to apply. I replaced the toy shelves in the boys’ rooms with a bookshelf and made them each a small reading nook in their bedrooms. This was the Quiet Zone. I consolidated all the toys into one toy shelve in the living room: the Play Zone. I moved the art supplies, bean and kinetic sand bins to the moveable island in our kitchen: the Messy Zone. I put flash cards and activity books on a shelf beside the table: the Focus Zone. And my in-laws built a climbing wall for the boys which we mounted on a wall in the basement. I moved our Sensory Scout swing down there as well and that became the Movement Zone. It took me a few hours on my own. I have to be honest, for a couple of hours my house looked like a complete disaster zone as I pulled out every toy, every book, all the art supplies and moved them to their respective zones. But after everything was put away in its new home, the house felt noticeably different, more settled, more inviting.

When my older son came home from school he excitedly exclaimed, “Oh wow, our house got an upgrade! Look at all the new features!” The boys have really embraced the zones. They play with their toys more intentionally, they spend more time reading, and best of all for me, cleaning up and keeping the house tidy has become way easier! It was a win for everyone! The house felt so much better with that one change. We still had way too much stuff and we’ve since come a long ways in that regard. And the house feels even better! But, that’s for another post.